Welcome to Cold War Gamer, a blog I am using to record my Cold War wargaming projects. These range from fictitious Cold War hot projects to historical conflicts that took place around the globe throughout the Cold War era, all modelled and gamed in 20mm. The blog includes links to various resources useful to the Cold War Gamer.

Sunday, 18 August 2013

Review - Model 1/72, Italeri Mig 29 Fulcrum

The Mig 29 Fulcrum entered Service with the Soviet Air Force in 1983, it served extensively in 16 Air Army, the organisation controlling the frontal aviation assets deployed to GSFG. It was deployed in the fighter squadrons and provided fighter cover for Frontal Aviation Air operations. At £10.99 the Italeri kit is one of the cheaper on the market, which as I am not primarily an aero modeller was one of the prime motivators in selecting the kit.

The model was simple to make with only two pain points, the first comes from following the instructions and adding the air intake covers, which of course were only deployed when the aircraft was on the ground. The other of course was the under carriage covers if you wish to model the aircraft with wheels up, with most aircraft kits being designed for wheels down display this was painful. The aircraft comes with a centreline fuel tank, which I left off in order to mount it on a flight stand. The munitions are somewhat delicate and perhaps not the best for the rough handling in transit and on the table, replacing them with something more robust would be a good plan.

The kit builds into a nice enough model of the aircraft and other than the munitions comment is certainly fit for Wargames purposes, there are some excellent reviews of this kit around the web and plenty of great Immagery so a deal of support for getting it right.

For the paint scheme I used Vallejo 989 Sky Grey with the disruptive pattern overpainted in Vallejo 886 Grey Green, Cockpit and Engine are in Vallejo 863 Black Grey, the anti glare panel is black and the nose cone a mix of Sky Grey and Black Grey. The Aircraft was painted all over in Sky Grey, the disruptive pattern was painted on then the panel lines were painted in using the GW black wash. Additional washes of the base colours were then applied over the panel lines until the desired effect was achieved.

Decals used were as supplied with the kit less the aircraft number which came from the Bergamot decal set previously described. The Aircraft is mounted on a Coresec engineering flight stand which now includes an adjustable head which allows variable angles of attack to be set, useful when providing a visual indicator of ground attacks.